Alexander Julian on new Hornets jersey: I made that team a lot of money

Although we won’t know what the new Charlotte Hornets’ jersey will look like until June 19, we already know the design departs from what Chapel Hill native Alexander Julian created for the team when it was founded in 1988.

At the time, basketball shorts were short, like today’s track shorts, but Julian designed longer shorts after Michael Jordan (his favorite player) had longer shorts made for himself. Julian designed the original Hornets jerseys for free, but was paid with a monthly shipment of five pounds of Carolina barbecue. The team sold more than $200 million worth of jerseys worldwide, the designer told me this week.

Although he created more than 100 designs for the new jersey after being approached by the Charlotte Bobcats’ management team last year, Julian told me he won’t say anything negative about the new jerseys when they are unveiled. According to Julian, a nationally renowned fashion designer and owner of the Julian’s clothing store in Chapel Hill, he offered to design these jerseys for free, too.

“They said, ‘Why?’ and I said, ‘I’d like a three-peat,’” Julian said to me on the phone. “I got accolades for the first uniforms. After that I did the Tar Heels uniforms. That went over really, really well. I’d like to prove I can do it again.”

And by “it” he means change the face of not only the team, but all of Charlotte. No one had used teal on uniforms before; he had researched NBA uniforms before designing the original jerseys.

“Next thing I know everything in Charlotte was teal. Hotels had teal bath towels. Buildings were teal. There was even a new subdivision called Teal Acres,” laughs Julian, who says he chose to use his signature colors because they are most flattering on nearly all skin tones.

“Sadly, (team officials) told me in the middle of the summer they are ‘going in a different direction’ ” for the new uniforms. “I ran into (recently retired NBA commissioner) David Stern at a party in New York two weeks ago. He says he begged them to let me do it. Because it was so successful. I made those guys a lot of money.”